These data were created to provide open and free datasets depicting prevalent and accurate delineation of surficial human disturbances in Alberta to stakeholders; foreseeably utilized in research, land use management and regional planning, trend analysis, and general interest.

Effective management of human footprint requires a reliable and credible system for monitoring and reporting. The ABMI has been reporting on human footprint since 2007, and beginning in 2015, has been working in collaboration with the Government of Alberta as part of the Alberta Human Footprint Monitoring Program (AHFMP) to improve the accuracy of human footprint. The base layers produced through this process were used by the ABMI to enhance four Human Footprint (HF) categories (i.e. roads, rails, well-pads, and seismic lines) in the ABMI 2014 wall-to-wall human footprint inventory. This province-wide product, along with the ABMI sample-based human footprint trend data are used to report on the amount, type, and distribution of different human footprint categories in the province through time.

At the provincial scale, the ABMI consolidates 21 human footprint categories (based on more than 115 anthropogenic disturbance types) into a single integrated dataset by applying a specific order of precedence to create the ABMI Human Footprint Inventory (HFI, circa 2018; Table 01). Datasets are currently publicly available for these years: 2007, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2018.

The most up to date and preeminent Human Footprint Inventory 2018 (HFI 2018) dataset was developed in part by a collaborative effort of data accumulation between the Government of Alberta and the ABMI, together forming the Alberta Human Footprint Monitoring Program (AHFMP) to better enhance and update human footprint data in Alberta. Going forward, all human footprint data and information produced by the AHFMP will be made available online in a single authoritative data sharing format. These efforts are incorporated into the leading development of techniques in interpretation and delineation that supersede previous technical approaches made by the ABMI.

Preceding datasets (i.e., 2007, 2012) were created using original technical approaches, an exception being HF inventory for 2010 conditions. The 2010 dataset was retroactively re-constructed based on the HFI 2014 dataset’s improved data collection and delineation techniques. The 2010 Human Footprint Inventory will be an integral part of a decadal collection of datasets (e.g., 2010, 2020, 2030, and etc.) for future human footprint trend analysis and will be updated collectively henceforth.